By Eric Bradner, CNN
(CNN) — A majority of California’s likely voters say they think the state is heading in the wrong direction. The question the race for governor there will decide is whether those voters lay blame at the feet of the Democrats who run the state, or a Republican Party led by President Donald Trump.
Viewers in the state and beyond will get a chance to hear both sides of that argument on Wednesday night, when Democrat Xavier Becerra debates Republican Steve Hilton on CNN.
Polls show Becerra, a former secretary of Health and Human Services, with a significant lead over Hilton, an ex-Fox News host and British political operative, in the race to replace term-limited Gov. Gavin Newsom. A Public Policy Institute of California survey conducted in early September found Becerra ahead, 60% to 38%, among likely voters. That same poll found that 52% of likely voters say the state is headed in the wrong direction — while an even larger share, 77%, say the nation is headed in the wrong direction.
The winner of the gubernatorial race will set the agenda for the nation’s most populous state — home to about 12% of all Americans — and one on the frontlines of a number of major issues confronting the country, including the cost of living and housing prices, rampant homelessness, natural disasters and the rise of artificial intelligence being developed largely in California’s Silicon Valley.
Here’s what to watch when Becerra and Hilton debate Wednesday night at 9 p.m. ET (6 p.m. PT) in CNN’s Burbank studio:
Affordability is the dominant issue
The top concern on voters’ minds is the cost of living — and both campaigns have largely oriented their policy platforms around addressing it.
Hilton is promising to unwind a bevy of progressive policies — and in doing so, claims he can get gas prices below $3 per gallon, cut utility bills in half and dramatically accelerate construction of starter homes for young families.
He is also pledging to eliminate state income taxes on the first $150,000 Californians earn. Hilton says he would pay for that proposal by slashing funding for high-speed rail and homelessness nonprofits and by cutting state government departments’ budgets by 5%.
Those proposals would be all but certain to encounter a wall of resistance from the Democratic-dominated California legislature.
Becerra, meanwhile, is proposing a “Power Hour” — up to two hours of free electricity for low-income households, achieved using excess solar electricity produced in California.
He has also said he would declare a state of emergency to freeze rates for utilities and insurance, effectively pausing further cost hikes.
He has sought to make health care a focus of his campaign but has largely avoided detailed policy proposals — instead broadly vowing to work toward universal coverage while emphasizing primary care.
Becerra steps out of Newsom’s shadow
For years, Newsom has been at the center of California’s political universe — and even though he’s months away from leaving office, a potential 2028 presidential run would keep him, and the problems and policies of the state he leads, in the spotlight.
But if he wins in November, the much lower-key Becerra will be stepping out of Newsom’s shadow and into the spotlight himself — entering one of the nation’s highest-profile political offices as the state is brawling with the Trump administration over climate regulations, voting rules, immigration enforcement and more.
Becerra’s campaign has been risk-averse. He has largely avoided interviews and unscripted moments and been noncommittal on policy matters, speaking in broad strokes about liberal principles rather than making specific pledges and committing to precise targets and timelines that could eventually be held against him.
Still, he has a long record in Democratic politics, including stints in House Democratic leadership in Washington, as California attorney general and as former President Joe Biden’s health and human services secretary. And he is leaning into that record on the campaign trail.
During the primary and the general election, Becerra has stuck to a common refrain, saying some version of: “I am not running on inflated promises. I am running on my record.”
Hilton’s ‘uphill battle’ to win over Dems
That’s a stark difference from Hilton, who recently told the Orange County Register’s editorial board that Becerra is “behaving very arrogantly in this election.”
Hilton is everywhere — from cutting social media videos in a t-shirt at gas stations to appearing on the liberal “Pod Save America” podcast. It’s the approach of an underdog with less to lose than Becerra, and increasingly, little time to close the polling gap.
“It’s an uphill battle, but we think we’ve closed the gap,” Hilton told the Register.
To win in California, Hilton — who was endorsed by Trump in California’s top-two primary, which helped him consolidate Republican votes as Democrats fractured among several candidates — will have to win over huge numbers of Democratic and independent voters, many of whom don’t like the president (and don’t like Fox News, where Hilton once hosted a weekly show).
He is doing so by arguing that blame for the struggles California faces lie not with the president, but with Democrats who have full control over the state government.
“He only messages Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump all the time,” Hilton told the Register. “My message is, look, you can be anti-Trump and still vote for me.”
Rise of artificial intelligence
One topic on which the candidates have not yet staked out particularly clear positions is the rise of artificial intelligence, and the potential risks it poses.
As California-based tech firms race to roll out new, more advanced AI models, some California policymakers have urged the state to enact new safeguards. Newsom this month ordered state agencies to develop AI safety recommendations and convened experts to work toward a series of policy recommendations. Among the potential policies under consideration is an emergency shutoff — a “kill switch” for AI companies’ frontier models if they go rogue.
Becerra has laid out a broad 11-point plan in which he says he would deploy AI within state government “to cut permitting delays, improve benefits delivery, and find efficiencies that have long eluded us.” Becerra’s plan also calls for a “national framework” of safety regulations.
“Strong standards and a thriving AI sector don’t have to be in conflict, and California is fully capable of setting the gold standard,” his plan says.
Hilton, in a Politico interview in August, said AI companies have stoked fear of their product, and said the government so far is “under regulating some of the harms, for example, in relation to children and in relation to the creative community and their output, but we’re in danger of over regulating some of the potential benefits.”
Keeping film production in California
The candidates could also face questions about how California can keep television and film production in Hollywood, with other states and countries luring tens of thousands of jobs out of the state in recent years with tax incentives and cheaper production costs.
California recently doubled a tax credit program for television and film production to $750 million annually. But Hilton said in a Spectrum News interview that is “totally inadequate.”
Hilton is campaigning on a “Bring Hollywood home” proposal that would include “stronger” tax credits that cover more production costs, much faster approvals for those credits, reserved funding for smaller productions, and staff in the governor’s office focused on eliminating bureaucratic delays.
Becerra, meanwhile, says he will expand California’s tax credit to cover more production costs, and fast-track local and state permitting for film and television production. He also says he will convene a “California Entertainment Summit” to create a public plan for the industry and would require streaming content platforms to share more data with workers about how the products they worked on performed to give “workers what they need to bargain fairly.”
The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
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